Page 3 of A Gathering Storm
Northshore first, Graeme's jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth as he lowers his head further, exposing more throat, more vulnerability. His pack follows with varying degrees of reluctance—some with relief that the crisis has passed, others with barely concealed fury at being forced into submission by ancient laws they'd rather ignore.
Southcove next, their matriarch giving me a look that says we'll discuss this later, her eyes promising both respect and reckoning. Elena remembers when the Right was last invoked, thirty years ago when the Westport pack tried to break away entirely. She knows its power and its costs. But she gestures her wolves down with practiced authority, each movement sharp with decades of leadership.
Eastmoor last, always testing boundaries even in submission. Connor Eastmoor takes his time, making sure everyone sees him weighing his options before finally bending his knee. His wolves follow suit, but their submission carries the promise of future challenge, future tests of authority.
The storm winds whip around us with increasing violence, salt and rain and the electric taste of ozone filling the air. Lightning illuminates the circle in stark, violent moments—wolves on their knees before standing stones, granite towers reaching toward turbulent sky, and me at the center, holding it all together through will and ancient rite and power that burns in my veins like liquid fire.
"The survey teams will be dealt with," I say into the charged silence, my voice carrying despite the howling wind. "Quietly. Without blood that leads back to us. The smugglers remain because they're useful—would you rather have government agents crawling over every inch of these islands looking for tourists who have disappeared?"
The question hangs in the air, unanswered because they can't answer. The Right of Judgment binds them to listen, to accept, to submit to authority they'd rather challenge. But I can see the resentment building behind forced compliance, the way young wolves file away grievances for future settling.
"We survive by being smart. By being unified, even if that unity is built on mutual hatred held in check." The words taste like ash in my mouth, bitter truths that none of us want to acknowledge. "The moment we turn on each other is the moment we fall."
I release them with a gesture that carries the weight of bloodline and birthright, letting the ancient power drain back into stone and earth where it belongs. They rise slowly, warily, muscles cramped from forced submission and pride stinging from public humiliation. The compliance is there, bought with power and tradition, but I see the resentment burning in their eyes like banked coals.
Compliance born of fear and tradition, not loyalty. Not trust. Not the willing unity that might actually see us through the challenges ahead.
They disperse into the night in their separate groups, casting dark looks over shoulders as they file out between the standing stones. Whispers already start about what this means, whatcomes next, how long this forced peace can last. The storm follows them inland, carrying their scents and their anger toward the distant lights of the village.
And I'm left alone with the standing stones and the weight of what I've just done.
Invoking the Right of Judgment buys time, nothing more. It's an emergency measure, meant for moments of extreme crisis when the alternative is the complete dissolution of clan structure.
He wouldn't have been wrong.
The stones still hum with residual power, their runes fading slowly back to barely-visible scratches worn by wind and rain. But the energy lingers, making the air taste of ozone and old magic, of forces that predate human understanding. My storm-sense still crackles with feedback from what I've just done, power recognizing power in an endless loop.
Lightning forks across the horizon, illuminating the sea in glimpses of silver and shadow. Each flash reveals the same view my ancestors saw—endless water, protective barrier against the mainland world that grows more dangerous with each passing year. The islands have always been refuge, sanctuary for things that can't survive in the modern world.
But sanctuary is just another word for prison if you can't leave.
And I stand at their center, alpha of a fractured territory held together by increasingly fragile threads. The weight of leadership sits heavy on my shoulders, heavier with each passing year as the old solutions prove inadequate for new problems.
The wind carries scents of dissent, of young wolves who'll remember this night as humiliation rather than necessity. Graeme won't let this go—boys like him never do. They'll nurse their wounded pride and gather followers, whispering about weak leadership and compromised authority. Neither will theothers who see my measured responses as weakness rather than strategy, who mistake restraint for cowardice.
Thunder rolls across the water like the footsteps of giants, and I taste change coming on the salt wind. Not just weather, something deeper, more fundamental. The old ways are failing, cracking under pressure they were never designed to withstand. The young ones hunger for war they don't understand, while the wise ones whisper about extinction and the price of exposure.
And somewhere out there, beyond the protective barrier of storm and sea, the modern world inches closer to discovering what hides in the last wild places. Satellites that can track heat signatures through forest canopy. Forensic techniques that can identify species from a single hair. DNA analysis that reveals impossible genetic combinations.
My wolf paces beneath my skin, restless with the knowledge that authority claimed through force alone never lasts. History is littered with alphas who ruled through fear and fell when that fear finally broke. If the clans won't unite willingly, if tradition and law aren't enough anymore, then I need something else.
New alliances. New strategies. New blood, perhaps, to remind the old bloodlines what they're fighting to protect.
The thought settles into my bones like prophecy, carried on storm wind and ancient magic. Change is coming whether I will it or not, riding the wind like the scent of rain before a downpour. The question is whether I'll guide it or be consumed by it, whether I can adapt fast enough to keep us all alive.
I turn my back on the sacred circle and walk into the dying storm, feeling the weight of every ancestor who stood where I stood, faced what I face. They found ways to preserve our kind through war and famine, through witch hunts and modernization, through the slow encroachment of human civilization on the wild places.
But they never faced this—a generation that questions not just authority but the very need for secrecy. Young wolves who'd rather fight than hide, even if that fight means exposure and extinction. Children raised on stories of dominance who can't understand why their strength must be hidden, why their true nature must be denied.
The cliff path winds down toward the harbor, switchbacking through wind-carved stone and hardy grass that grows in salt spray and storm. Each step takes me further from the sacred circle and closer to the ordinary world—the village where lights glow warm against the dark, where humans live their careful lives in ignorance of their neighbors' true nature.
Human lights, human lives, carefully separate from but dependent on the older truths of this island. They don't know their neighbors can run on four legs, don't know their missing pets become prey when young wolves need to hunt. Don't know their protection comes from treaties signed in blood and enforced by beings they'd call monsters if they could see past carefully maintained illusions.
Better they never know. The alternative is war—not just between clans but between species, with weapons that make claws and fangs obsolete. Better to maintain the careful fiction that nothing stranger than seals and storm petrels calls these islands home.
But keeping that ignorance intact while holding together three packs ready to tear each other apart? That's going to take more than invoked Rights and storm-sense power. It's going to take something I'm not sure I possess anymore—the kind of inspired leadership that makes wolves want to follow rather than just submit.
It's going to take a miracle.
